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We ask the nation’s creatives to share their childhood memories of idyllic getaways in regions affected by this summer’s bushfires
In an effort encourage tourism back to the AUSTRALIAN REGIONS devastated by bushfires at the beginning of 2020, we ask the nation's creative to share their CHILDHOOD MEMORIES of idyllic getaways in the affected areas. Get back to nature and keep your next holiday LOCAL. As told to Anna Delprat
David Caon INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER
My family owned a shack near the beach in the town of Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island. We would go three or four times a year, sometimes for weeks at a time. It was a raw and untouched place, which forced a different pace of life upon all who visited. As kids, we loved it because of all the freedom we had to explore and create our own fun. We had local friends and a day would routinely involve bike riding, fishing, jumping off the jetty, exploring and hiding our city-slicker ways as much as possible. I have keen memories of watching my little sister as she cleaned the fish I was catching directly on the rocks — she was always better at it than I was. My father made a point of cooking everything we caught. Luckily, he was a restaurateur. We kept a car there that we called ‘The Bomb’ named in the traditional sense of the term. It was a 1970s-era Holden Kingswood station wagon, which was starting to rust quite badly. My father suggested that my sister and I cover the car in designs applied with acrylic paints. It remained like that for years. My memories of my childhood holidays of Penneshaw are of a wild-west sense of fun for us kids, of never wanting to leave and wishing I was a local.
FASHION AND INTERIOR DESIGNER
“And spring, like most country towns, is heavenly with the air filled with fragrant scents from all the blooming BLOSSOM TREES and plants and the promise of summer” COLLETTE DINNIGAN
Collette Dinnigan AO
Estella [my daughter] was two when I bought my Milton property in 2006. We would try and spend at least one weekend a month there and as many of the school holidays as possible. We would spend endless summer days at either Narrawallee Beach and the inlet at Lake Conjola, Mollymook or one of the many beaches close by boogie boarding — having Sam Burich giving surf lessons —fishing, swimming, walking the dogs and just having fun. Estella caught her first fish in Lake Conjola and then progressed to beach fishing for whiting. When we were not at the beach, time was taken up with Estella’s passion for horses and mine for the garden. Back then, there weren’t as many of the well-known restaurants that surround the area so we mostly spent time at home cooking for and with friends. Now, among the many restaurants we go to are Cupitt’s, our local, as well as Rick Stein at Bannisters in Mollymook, which is a big treat for any trip. We would often go an hour south through the National Park and collect abalone from the rock pools at low tide. Bradley [my husband] would go diving and catch lobsters that were hidden in the rock crevices. In winter, it’s different but just as magical. We spend less time at the beach but still have long walks with the dogs and children. We go to the local food markets to buy what vegetables we don’t grow and spend time cooking, mostly using the outdoor pizza oven. It’s also the time I pick my lemons and preserve them, ready for Christmas cooking and gifts. And spring, like most country towns, is heavenly with the air filled with fragrant scents from all the blooming blossom trees and plants and the promise of summer. The local community is very welcoming and was an extra bonus to such a beautiful part of the NSW South Coast when we first arrived.
Mary Lou Ryan COFOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF BASSIKE
I grew up in Victoria, the youngest of five children. Each year, we’d bundle into the family Chevrolet and travel up the coast to Pambula and Merimbula in NSW. I just remember it being the simplest and best of times! The towns were — and still are — quaint and charming, with wonderful people in the community. And the water at Merimbula is crystal blue — it’s such a picturesque seascape.
Yasmine Ghoniem INTERIOR DESIGNER
Circa 1988, Sussex Inlet was a holiday destination for our family for years. Every summer, the parents would gather the kids, chuck us in the car and make our way towards heaven for a week or two. As soon as the cars were parked outside our modest holiday accommodation, we flung the car doors open, ripping our clothes off as we careered down to the water’s edge. We’d fish while eating snags, play tag from early morning until night. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of that inlet, and I’m so very lucky to have the memory framed for life — Dad loved his camera. The photo taken here (right) is of myself, my cousin Julia, brother Kareem and Julia’s brother Gilbert — the awesome foursome.
David Flack INTERIOR DESIGNER
As a kid we travelled throughout the country towns of Victoria and NSW, and always with a tent that harboured moments that still manage to bring my family together. We now share these stories with my siblings’ kids — the rat that made a nest under our sleeping bags; the fire that wouldn’t light; and the packed esky that never made it to the campsite. I was obsessed with the bakeries and homewares stores that proudly set the tone of the towns we would visit. During the recent fires, I was continuing our family tradition in country South Australia with my friends. We spent this summer reminiscing about our families’ holiday adventures, and these towns that have not only shaped our country but our families. I’m looking forward to visiting the High Country in Easter to continue my hunt for Australia’s best pie and doughnut, and to return to the homewares shops that started my passion for interiors.
Patrick Johnson TAILOR
I have very fond memories as a child of Kangaroo Island. KI — as we call it — is just off the coast, south-west of Adelaide in the Great Australian Bight, and full of all the iconic Aussie animals: kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, echidnas, platypus, brush-tailed possums, bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, southern right whales and, of course, lots of great white sharks. And then with this crazy landscape of huge granite boulders, deep red soil, rolling farmland (about half the island remains uncleared with most of that as national park), pristine beaches, it even has a desert. We would roam free with our cousins on our bikes, swim in the rock pools, dive for lobster and catch as many King George whiting as we could carry. It was Neverland.
Laura Jones ARTIST
I had an idyllic childhood in Kurrajong at the foothills of the Blue Mountains, NSW. My family used to go for picnics at Mount Wilson and Mount Tomah, went camping at Wheeny Creek and regularly explored the bushwalks along the Bells Line of Road. We usually went with two or three other families, and learnt how to build a campfire, pitch a tent and boil a billy. I remember looking out for platypus in the creek, climbing trees and telling stories with the other kids by the fire. Mount Wilson is known for its tree ferns, altitude and beautiful gardens. I remember rugging up in winter and having picnics with hundreds of other kids running around in our ’80s denim and gumboots with trees of all different colours surrounding us.
My parents still live in the same home we grew up in. Recently, Kurrajong has started to look like a completely different place — it was so dry that nothing had the sparkle it usually has. Just over the ridge is Bilpin, the famous apple-growing town that was recently ravaged by bushfire. My brother was defending a fire up at Mount Tomah, and my uncle somehow managed to save all of his Wollemi Wilderness Cabins in Berambing. It was very worrying and distressing for the entire community. I’m going to paint former NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner Greg Mullins for the Archibald Prize. His speech in November, with other former fire and emergency chiefs, was an important turning point in the conversations around bushfires and climate change.
“We spent this summer reminiscing about our families’ holiday ADVENTURES, and these towns that have not only SHAPED our country but our FAMILIES” DAVID FLACK
“I now holiday there with my own family to RELIVE all of these memories steeped in the NOSTALGIA of my childhood” SIBELLA COURT
Sibella Court INTERIOR DESIGNER
I have endless fond memories of all our holidays spent at Smiths Lake and all the glorious beaches in the Pacific Palms region: Cellito, Blueys, Boomerang, Elizabeth and Shelly Beach. My grandparents lived on the edge of Smiths Lake and, over a couple of decades, they’ve built accommodation called Sandpiper on Smiths Lake that is still there today. My siblings and I learnt to fish, swim, prawn, sail, bike-ride, bush-walk, press flowers and adventure on the lake. I can close my eyes and see the wrap-around verandah dripping in different varieties of wisteria, the chintz-decorated living room looking out to the lake and me lolling around watching 1950s and ’60s matinee movies, brown as a berry and eating my grandmother’s fresh-out-of-the-oven scones. My grandmother was a painter, and she captured the landscape and her favourite flowers in oils as we raced around ducking the nesting magpies with ice-cream containers on our heads, and fossicking around in Pa’s shed among the ropes, sailing vessels, jars of screws and old pin-up calendars. I now holiday there with my own family to relive all these memories steeped in the nostalgia of my childhood.
Anna-Wili Highfield ARTIST
The Blue Mountains was a place my family chose to visit often. Mum and Dad had little in common, but both had a love of the mountains; the old-world grandeur and gardens for Mum and the epic bushland and Indigenous history for Dad. We’d stop at every antiques store on the way up the mountains — I still have the chairs we bought from Wentworth Falls when I was around seven. I found the mountains fascinatingly spooky and enchanting: the stuck-in-time nature of the hotels from the 1920s and ’30s (like the Hydro Majestic, where turn-of-the-last-century Sydneysiders would travel for their health); a grave beside train tracks where a young man had been struck by lightning a hundred years before; empty pools with great concrete dolphins and ballrooms without a soul in them. When I said the place felt scary, Dad told me about the terrible slaughter of Indigenous tribes and the history. I believed without hesitation the Dreamtime story of the Three Sisters, chased by a witch and frozen in rock. The valleys and mountains had a spiritual effect on me, the immense time they spoke of... No wonder Darwin re-evaluated his theory of the age of the planet after visiting Katoomba.
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